Crockett of Tennessee Read online

  They talked over polite trivialities for only a few moments before Persius settled down to telling his story, picking up at the place David and he had last been together: the soldiers’ camp in the Creek War.

  Chapter 49

  “I appreciated your notion of helping me escape that night,” Persius said, “but I knowed I couldn’t involve you in it, David. So instead of luring that guard to the place you said, I had him take me into the woods, and I got the chain around his neck and choked him senseless. He had the key on him, so it was easy to get loose from my chains, steal a horse, and take on out of there.

  “I headed north and then east, all the way into North Carolina. I wound up in the town of Wilmington and found me some work in a warehouse. Stayed at it about a year, and then the wife of the man who owned the place left him and he went out of his head. He went into the warehouse in the middle of the night, set the place afire around him, then shot hisself through the noggin. Well, there was no work left for me there after that, so I went on up to the Chesapeake Bay and found work on the docks. I was there for a good five years, working under a different name than my own, and putting money aside in a strongbox I hid beneath the floorboards of a little house I rented. I met a woman and she moved in with me for about six months, and said she’d marry me. The landlord of my little place got wind I had took in a female, and Lord he got fearsome mad! He was a righteous sort, and told me she would have to go right off, or marry me right off, or out I would go. I was ready to marry, and she pledged to do the same, but while I was out scouting for a justice of the peace to do the job, she took my strongbox from under the floor and lit out with it, leaving me flat broke and jilted besides.”

  “That’s a hard blow for a man to endure, Persius.”

  “Made me furious angry. I headed out to find her, and discovered she’d had a man on the side all that time and it was him who had talked her into stealing my money. He was a peg-legged man, so it wasn’t hard to find folks who remembered seeing him.”

  “I’ve had my problems with peg-legged folk myself,” David mumbled, thinking of the “Chronicle”-writing Adam Huntsman.

  Persius went on. “I followed them two all the way across Virginia, and when I at last caught up with them—I should say caught up with her—he had took the money from her and dumped her off like a sack of bad feed. She was repentant as a harlot at the gates of hell, begging me to give her another chance, to forgive her, take her back, all that kind of thing. I wouldn’t do it. I might be simple-headed gullible from time to time, but not fool gullible. I bid her good-bye and went out looking for Mr. Peg-leg and my money.

  “By the time I found him, I’d gone all the way to the Falls of the Ohio, and he’d spent every cent. Gambled it off mostly, or spent it on women. I whupped up on him until there wasn’t an unbroke bone left in his face, then dumped him off in a pile of smuts and rubbish and headed out to find some other way to rebuild my fortune. It was my fault, I know, for not taking better care of my money. I should have guessed that woman would steal it.

  “For the next several years I did what I had to do, working mostly, stealing if it came down to that. After a time I got work on the river. Keelboating to begin with, then steamshipping. I was just a hand to start out with, but I had the right knack, and before long I was being trained to be a pilot. I’ve never been prouder. For the first time in my life I was going someplace. I was important.

  “But they say a man’s past always catches up with him, and mine surely did. That man who had took my woman and my money, he hit it rich gambling and showed up on the riverboat, fresh-married to the daughter of some fat mine owner living west of the Big Muddy. I had changed a right smart bit—fattened up some, and muscled, and I had no beard at the time, and short-clipped hair. But he knowed me right off, and to make a long story short, we had trouble. I knifed him deep and left him bleeding on the deck. Bled to death. It was a case of self-defense, just like with old Crider Cummings, but that don’t make no difference when you’re half redskin and half white-skinned trash. The dead man’s widow put her rich pappy on to me. He hired men to search me down, just to make his widowed little girl happy, no matter what it took, no matter what it cost. He had a half-dozen men on my trail at one time. I didn’t know a thing about it until they were nigh on to catching me, a good six months after I had fled the steamboat. I caught one of them in Memphis and made him spill out the facts to me at the point of my blade. He told me the whole tale, and that’s how I found out I was being chased in a mighty serious way. I knew then I had bad trouble.”

  Persius paused to rest his voice. The exertion of talking was making him weaker. David sat silently, marveling that one human life could have been so embroiled in violence and trouble from its very beginnings. Persius had been a fugitive of one sort or another, or several sorts at once, since the time he fled his Orphan Court bonding back in Greene County in 1794.

  “By the time I found out there was men on my trail, I had married me a girl I met in a rooming house in Memphis. That was my Matty, bless her heart. She was a lot younger than me, but had no kin, no schooling, no man, nothing but poverty and suffering … but oh, she was a fine young woman, even if she was puny and ailing most the time. Finest soul I ever met. Even read her Bible and prayed for my soul, every day from the day she met me. I had never knowed anybody else so good. She was too fine a person for me, David; she deserved a lot better. But I was all there was for her, and she became my wife and really cared for me. She saw good in me where nobody else had, except maybe your own mother, David.

  “I never had really loved nobody before Matty. She would’ve lived a better life before she met me if it hadn’t been for a man forcing hisself on her when she was just a young girl. She bore a baby because of that, and folks wouldn’t have nothing to do with her. It was like she was marked, you know. The baby was like Matty herself—on the sickly side. It didn’t survive a year. She told me all about it, weeping all the while.”

  Again Persius briefly stopped talking, a distant, wistful look in his eye. He spoke again in a softer tone. “If I could have healed the hurts that woman carried around with her, I’d have cut off my right hand to do it. There’s mysteries aplenty in this world, David Crockett, but no greater one than why good folks like my Matty have to suffer. I can understand a scoundrel like me suffering, but why her? I can’t figure it.”

  Silence lingered. If Persius was looking for an answer to that question, David couldn’t provide it. Persius cleared his throat and continued, his voice beginning to grow hoarse.

  “After we hitched up, we were living in Memphis and I was doing warehouse and dock labor on the riverfront. Them rangers or detectives, or whatever you want to call them bastards that had been hired to get me, caught wind of where I was and come after me again. Matty was with child. They set our house afire and we had to flee. We almost didn’t make it out of there. I killed one of the ones that done it; that was my only satisfaction.

  “I didn’t know where to go. Matty had no folks we could turn to; and I surely didn’t. But in Memphis I had heard a lot about the famous Davy Crockett, congressman for Tennessee. Oh, I was proud of you, David. It was hard not to brag on having run with you, but I didn’t want to bring down your reputation, like I’ve done told you. I knew where you lived, everything, and even played around with trying to visit you, but it never seemed the right thing to do. Then came the year of ’twenty-eight, right at the first of it in the bitter season. Matty had gave birth to baby Rebecca in a cheap boardinghouse we had took a room in, and both of them were sickly. And later they caught up with us again, and put us on the run. I went for your place, David, not having anywhere else to go. Bad weather hit and Matty got sicker and sicker. She died on me not far from your house, and I carried her corpse on my shoulder until I found a place to lay her to rest. It was in a little gully close to your place. I laid her out, put a sprig of evergreen in her hands, and covered her as best I could. God, I wish I could have done more. I wish I could have buried
her proper.”

  “Her grave was found later on, Persius. And she was reburied, in a proper grave with a cross atop it.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Davy.” Persius paused, swiping at moist eyes. He drew in a labored breath and went on. “Well, there I was, them men after me, rain and drizzle falling down and nigh turning to snow, and me crazy with grief over Matty. And poor little Rebecca, not more than three months old, hungry and needing her ma, yet so weak she could hardly cry. She was lying in her box of flax, the drizzle falling on her. I heard riders on the road and figured it was them hired detectives after me. I picked up Rebecca in her box and made for your house. There was no time to do nothing but tuck that silver piece in her wrap in hopes you’d recognize it and figure out she was my child. I hammered the door and ran. It was the last time I ever laid eyes on my little girl.”

  “God, Persius. What a sorrowful thing.”

  “Maybe I did the wrong thing leaving her. But you got to understand, Davy: I was being chased. I had just lost my wife, just buried her with my own hands. I was crazy with it all. Didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what was right or sensible. So I just left her there and ran.”

  “I don’t fault you, Persius. You had stood up under more than most could bear already.”

  “The riders I had heard on the road … it wound up that it wasn’t them detectives after all. Just travelers, that’s all. I headed back to your house, but the baby had done been took inside. I stood there in the yard for the longest time, thinking maybe I should show myself … but I didn’t. I didn’t know if you were there or off in Washington. One of your boys might have shot me. And there was something else too. I knowed that my little girl would have a better life in your home than ever I could give her. So I turned and went away. I’ve wondered ever since if I had done right by my daughter.” Persius took another deep, slow breath. “Now I know it didn’t matter anyways. She was bound to die. David, maybe it’s my fault she died. Maybe her getting all wet and cold while I buried her ma made her take sick and …” He trailed off and more tears came, silently.

  David’s heart went out to Persius. The fact was, he had been thinking the same thing, but Persius had nothing to gain by chastising himself for a tragedy long past. “What’s done is done, Persius, and it’s a page you can’t turn again.”

  “I know it. God, I wish I could turn it again.”

  “What happened to you after that?” David asked.

  “I just kept running. Working, stealing, gambling. Living my life day by day. I headed east and managed to throw them rangers off my trail, and I never saw hide nor hair of them thereafter. But now that I was safe and alive, all the things that made being safe and alive worth something were gone from me. I took to drinking a hell of a lot. Some sort of sickness got hold of me and like to have killed me. I reckon this thing I just shook off was the same sickness, come back again.”

  “I’ve had the same kind of sickness. Doc says he believes skeeters spread it to me once when I was in Alabama,” David said.

  Persius did not comment, his thoughts still fixed on his story. He went on. “Many a time I’d think back on little Rebecca and wonder what had become of her, and think maybe I should go and find out if she had made it through … then I’d see myself all drunk and filthy and know that if she was alive, it was best that she never know who her father really was.

  “But it ate at me, not knowing what had happened to her. I drifted here, there, all about. Then one day, after I heard you had been elected again to the Congress, I figured it out: I could come to Washington City and look you up, without your family around. I could find out what had become of my girl, but she’d never have to see me herself. She’d never have to know her father was the kind of man he was. Of course, now I know it wouldn’t have mattered. My little girl is dead.” He stopped, brooding.

  “And so here we are, back together like the old days,” David said, trying to brighten the somber atmosphere.

  Persius looked at him very seriously. “No. The old days is gone. There’ll never be nothing like the old days again. We’ve split off in two different directions, me and you. You count for something. They say you might make president someday. Me, I don’t count for nothing. Never have and never will.”

  “You count for something to me.” David said the words and meant them—and then he recalled his own selfish concerns about Persius’s return and felt shamed.

  “No, David, I don’t count for nothing, and you know it. If I did count, you’d have put me in your storybook. But like I said, I don’t blame you for leaving me out. I understand why you had to.”

  David’s sense of shame grew until it felt a little like anger. Persius’s direct words had a way of stripping off the layers of pretense and rationalization with which he had veneered so many of his thoughts and attitudes. It was an uncomfortable kind of surgery to endure, and he suddenly resented Persius for putting him through it.

  And perhaps in unconscious desire to give a sting of his own in return, he said, “Persius, there’s some things you must know. You said you choked that guard in the army camp until he was senseless. You did more than that. When they found him next morning, he was dead. You had killed him.”

  “Killed …” Persius looked bewildered. “I swear, I never tried to kill him. He was breathing when I left.”

  “Well, then he stopped breathing after. What it amounts to, Persius, is that in the eyes of the army, you murdered that man.”

  “I never knew!”

  “That’s two murders the law holds to your name. First Crider Cummings, and then that guard.” David decided forthrightness was in order. “You’re right, Persius. I did try to distance myself from you after you killed that guard, for the very reasons you said. I’ve even worried that somebody who knew us both when we were young would up and say something about Colonel Crockett having been friend to a murderer in his young days. So far that ain’t happened. I don’t want it to happen now.”

  Persius looked squarely at David. “It won’t. As soon as I’ve got my strength, I’ll be gone. I come to find out what had happened to my baby girl, and now I know. All that’s left now is for me to thank you and your wife for what care you gave her in the short time she lived, and to head out. You’ll never see me again.”

  David might have thought that those words were just what he had wanted to hear. Now that they were said, he felt otherwise.

  “No, Persius. I do want to see you again. I’m a public man, but surely there’s room for private friendships.”

  “Even with a man the law calls murderer?”

  Blast it all, why did everything Persius say have to unsettle a man so? David hardly knew how to talk to him. “You’re no murderer at heart.”

  “There’s several dead men that might say different, if they could.”

  “Hang it, Persius, just shut up about all such as that! You rest now, and I’ll come back tomorrow and see how you’re doing. I’ve got business I’ve got to attend to tonight.”

  David left, and spent the evening with Thomas Chilton, working hard on the autobiography. Throughout, he was painfully conscious each time he omitted or disguised the person of Persius Tarr in his story, but made sure he gave no hints of it to Chilton. He went to bed late, and didn’t sleep well.

  Congressional concerns occupied him all the next day, from breakfast until well past supper, and that night he received an unscheduled visit at his rooms from Whig strategists putting together a grand tour for the famed Colonel Crockett, to take place in the spring. By the time they were done, it was too late to go visit Persius, despite his promise. He retired, pledging to himself that calling on Persius would be his first order of business the next morning.

  He rose with the dawn, washed and dressed, and headed for Ibbotson’s. When he got there the old doctor was already up and about.

  “He’s not here, David. When I went in to see him this morning, he was gone.”

  “Gone … where?”

  “I don’t know
. Just gone. I’m not surprised. He seems the wandering type. Come and go without word to anyone. I regret he’s gone, oddly enough. You’ll have to tell me more about him. I know he is quite the ruffian, but I find I rather like him, somehow. I’m not sure just why.”

  “I know what you mean,” David said. He felt dejected and sad, remembering Persius’s comment that they would probably never see one another again. “I like him too. More now than I ever did before, strange to say.”

  “You think you’ll run across him again?”

  “He said I wouldn’t. But I hope I do. I really hope I do.”

  Chapter 50

  Days of intense, slavish labor brought the biography into being at last. It was entitled A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee, Written by Himself, and published by E. L. Carey and A. Hart of Philadelphia and Carey, Hart & Company of Baltimore. Its form followed the standard autobiographical pattern laid out by Benjamin Franklin in his famed literary self-portrait. David Crockett thought his book was as fine a volume as he had ever seen, right up there with Franklin’s in quality.

  The story it contained came almost entirely from David himself. The language was a combination of David’s and Thomas Chilton’s. David had put the final touch on the volume by writing a preface in which he stated, “The whole book is my own, and every sentiment and sentence in it. I would not be such a fool, or knave either, as to deny that I have had it hastily run over by a friend or so, and that some little alterations have been made in the spelling and grammar; and I am not so sure that it is not the worse of even that, for I despise this way of spelling contrary to nature.”

  He concluded with a declaration that the book is “truly the very thing itself—the exact image of its Author,” and signed his name at the bottom.

  At that point Chilton had breathed a sigh of relief. For a book in which David Crockett had supposedly written “every sentence,” the representative from Kentucky had certainly spent a lot of hours with pen in cramped hand and eyes glazing over from labor. But he did not mind the anonymity of his contribution. This book was designed to add to the glory of Colonel David Crockett for the sake of the Whig party. It was never intended to be a vehicle for Thomas Chilton.